The last few days of any game project are hectic. We know it, we have to work hard, and it’ll be long hours. Yet it seems that every time we reach this stage, I feel so overwhelmed by things that I always think that we’ll never make it.

Episode 3: The Oracle is a special one for me. Even though Nick Bryan took more care of the episode than I did, I always wanted to stay close to this episode because I knew it would be my favorite of the bunch. It’s such a critical one because this is the episode to reveal it all, the one where all the story comes together before the frantic ending that will be Episode 4: The Cain Killer.

To me, The Oracle has the better plot twists and some of the most gut-wrenching stuff in the series. It’s the episode that will make you torn about the motives behind the killings, and will make you see that everything is not as black and white as it seems. If we did our job right, by the end of the episode you might feel sympathetic towards characters you never thought you would feel sympathetic for.

So this episode needed the utmost care, and that’s why I never let it drift out of my hands too much. I was there when puzzles were being designed, dropped in the general outline for the episode, designed some of the puzzles myself, and took care of Act 4 (the ending section). I put it the hands of the very capable Nick Bryan, and stepped back to take care of Moebius or some non-fun business stuff that always requires my attention. (continue reading…)

I hope you’re ready to put on your sleuth hat!

Cognition Episode : The Oracle just around the corner, meaning we’re officially in crunch time: long hours, nights and weekends, all hands on deck and everyone’s neck-deep in testing and bug fixing to make this Episode ready and looking good. So this past weekend, I stepped into the role of playtester and finally got in my first full playthrough of Episode 3.

Episode 3 has been designed & directed by Nick Bryan, our assistant designer, and Cesar, so while I helped outline, edit and review the script for the Episode 3, I haven’t been as deeply involved with its development. And it was really fun to play a game I both knew and didn’t know for the first time!

Much like The Hangman and The Wise Monkey, The Oracle has its own unique feel and pacing. This time around, I found myself thinking of it more and more as a haunted house mystery. It’s got all the classic highlights:

• A new death reopens an investigation into a building with a bloody past
• Betrayal, secrets, and family drama lie at the center of this mystery
• Everyone has something to hide and no one can be trusted
• The past is intricately tied to Erica’s present in ways she couldn’t have anticipated
• Ghosts! (Well, Projection ghosts)
• There’s even a suspicious-looking butler! I mean, come on, look at this guy!

As soon as you enter the haunted house , the Enthon Towers, you know something’s changed. It’s subtle, but the whole tone of the game shifts as Erica digs into the grittiest of details here. Her post-cognition is really worked into every inch of the design in this Episode, which is so very steeped in discovering the secrets from the past of this place. So get out that sleuth hat, and you’ll want to bring a notepad and pencil for this one, too, because there’s a lot of detail to review and all of it is important. Get ready for some old-fashioned true detective work and an intriguing mystery; you’re not going to want to stop until you’ve figured it out!

I can’t wait for Episode 3 to be out there and to hear everyone’s reactions to the puzzles, new characters, and the mysteries in this one. Not to mention their theories on Episode 4, of course!

Today’s post is written by Gavin Greene, Production Coordinator for Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller, taking some time out of his very busy day to tell us about his role on the team!

Coordinators are the harbingers of red tape and re-prioritization, a bureaucratic middle man that can be respected, but never entirely liked. And that’s exactly where you need to be.

Artist's interpretation

Also known as an Associate Producer in teams that can afford such titles, a Coordinator’s lot in production is one of constant readjusting. The proud owner and operator of the master schedule, every week brings subtle transformations to your perfectly planned testing passes and animation blocking schedules. Game development is a process of constantly revising your prospects, as a thousand little variables are always in flux: Unity crashes and stubborn shoulder rigs, re-exports and complex renders. Add the fact that your entire team is satellite and around the world, and it makes the film production background you come seem like the most refreshing of breezes.

Luckily then, the day job of the Production Coordinator is to be everywhere at all times, or as close to it as humanly possible. One of the earliest things I learned is to remove the sound of Skype pings, my first few hours on staff was riddled with tiny chirps from a dozen conversations. You have an ear in every department during office hours, ready to rush in to solve any number of daily problems that can arise.

In between arranging and hosting all manners of department meetings and dailies (where everyone shows off their days work for their respective leads), you can be called upon to help get a recently approved prop into a character model’s hand or confirming a logic editor has the latest 3D layout of the scene he’s working on. It’s being on call on a phone line that’s always ringing. Given that we have departments in Italy and India, it also means daily midnight conferences on modeling procedures and approval processes.

Redmine: "From up here, you all look like little, compulsively organized ants."

Once (or if) you manage to quiet all immediate concerns for a moment, you shift from the microscopic back to the macroscopic. And at my position, that means going from firefighting to data entry. We at Phoenix Online use the SCRUM style of scheduling on a milestone delivery schedule – for at least one of our projects – all of which means a lot of organizing and updating spreadsheets and scheduling software documents. While each staff member sees their individual priorities in a shared “To Do List” Google doc, I primarily employ Hansoft for the grander plan. To my eyes, a game looks like a massive array of nodes and interconnected lines long before it takes manifests into something playable.

Once we establish a foundation of logic and everyone has a foothold in their department, minute bugs and polish assignments can be tracked using Redmine, a program which helps store and prioritize everything from a character with a spinning chest to a background that needs final shading. An average game project can run anywhere from 600 to a couple thousand of these little tasks, all of which come through your inbox at each stage of being fixed.

It’s certainly a mountainous amount of information to take in and process, be it day 1 or 1,000. But all Coordinators (or Associate Producers) learn fast on their feet, and I was impressed just how quickly I was employing a unique bag of tricks. Despite my intimidating introduction, my greatest asset is my team. If you have a wonderful assortment of people, your job becomes a whole lot smoother (if not less complex). The staff at Phoenix Online – my little schedule nodes – are a wonderful, truly dedicated bunch, with their own little brand of insanity that I’m proud to be contributing to.

I often forget how much I really love GDC. Yes, it’s exhausting, yes, by Friday all you want to do is go home and have sometime for yourself. Yes, the driving in and out from San Jose to San Francisco wears you out (Remind me to stay in a hotel in the city at least one day next GDC, I think I said that one last GDC). But, all in all, you get to meet so many interesting people, and rekindle the friendships you’ve made at past conventions. It’s a celebration of all things video games, and because it’s more business oriented than something like E3, it is my kind of place.

This time, Dave Gilbert from Wadjet Eye Games contacted a bunch of us in order to throw a party! It was the first branded “Adventure Game” party, and I wanted to recount a bit of how it went and the great people in it.

Vitek and myself were late to the party because we were stuck in the G.A.N.G Awards, where Cognition’s “The Taking” by Robert and Raleigh Holmes had been nominated for Best Song (Pop) in a Videogame. It was very exciting to see the game get a nomination on a big screen among so many other great songs. Of course, Journey won EVERYTHING (even the stuff it wasn’t nominated for!)

When we arrived the party had already started. The first puzzle: Apparently, even though Dave confirmed twice with the place, somehow GDC rejected our party (we are still scratching our heads about this one) and the booking was off. So we didn’t have a space and we had a bunch of people coming in. How do you fit that many Adventure Gamers in a place taken up by the normal crowd? Easy, you just “Take on the World” a-la Day of the Tentacle. And so, we slowly started to dominate the place. Part of that involved just eating random patrons French Fries. (Oh, you are not in the party? These fries are good, though).

Agustín Cordes and Cesar

We had celebrities! So, the day before Agustin Cordes from Senscape’s Asylum and myself were randomly walking in San Francisco when we bumped into Ron Gilbert (I swear to God I wasn’t stalking him! Maybe). Long story short, we introduced ourselves and felt awkward and so we invited him to the party, and he made it! Which was awesome! I didn’t get much chance to spend with him, but I hope a lot of people came by and said “hi!”

We also had Ragnar Tørnquist in the party. Now, everyone that knows me also knows that I LOVE The Longest Journey and that I was greatly influenced by it when I was

Ragnar Tørnquist and Cesar

writing The Silver Lining. So, my excited self sent an email (or maybe a thousand) to Ragnar a while ago asking if he was going to be at GDC to meet. And out of the blue, the week of GDC, he replied to (one of) the email(s) and asked us to meet over at the Lobby of the W. I have to say I randomly get the chance to meet with such nice developers. Dag Scheve (co-writer of Dreamfall) and Ragnar, are really two of the nicest people I have ever met. Aside from trying to get as many revelations on “Chapters” as possible, we also invited them to the party, and they showed up with all the team that was here for GDC before heading over to the Nordic Party! Ragnar invited me over there, but I had to decline as I was hosting this party. Next time, bud!

I even had the chance to meet some of the people from my own team an the forums. Seeing Kelsey (Rosella from the forums) and Wayne (from our QA team) as well as Gavin (our Production Coordinator) was great. I really felt like part of a big family.

Cesar and Wayne

All in all, it was great to see so many Adventure Game enthusiasts in one place (including the girl who told me she was a big fan of our work and couldn’t wait for Episode 3 of Cognition, Hi!) was a feeling you don’t get too often these days. I call for a repeat for GDC 2014. Bigger, bolder, and with more inventory items.

Thanks to everyone for hosting the party! Wadjet Eye Games, Senscape, Skygoblin, Los Munditos, Irresponsible Games, Grundislav Games, Freebird Games, Floating Hands Studios, Autumn Moon Entertainment, and Emily Morganti!

Kelsey and Cesar

Every game needs logic–and that doesn’t just mean the story and puzzles making sense! Logic, or logic scripting, is a part of the programming in the game engine that tells the game what to do. Logic is how the game knows what interactions are available to the player, and what should happen when they activate those interactions.

For Cognition, Moebius, and TSL Episode 5, we use a visual logic scripting tool in Unity that looks more or less like a flowchart. This is great for people like me, who know nothing about programming, as it’s much easier to follow, work with, and even put together. So no longer does a scripter need intimate knowledge of a programming language to help put the game together!

So, how does it all work? Let’s take an example from Episode 1. Now, as you can clearly see here….

Just kidding. That’s a little look at how complicated the logic can get, however, and this is tiny peek at all the things the game looks for when you walk into the FBI Main Station every time!

For real this time, let’s look at something a little simpler.  Clicking on the image below will make it easier to read and follow along.

These are the interactions for the gate in the opening scene of Episode 1. What we first do is identify for the game what object we’re referring to–the gate–which is done in the scene itself. That purple lozenge labeled “GateDoor_InteractionMesh” is tied to the gate itself. From there, we tell the game to build an action wheel for available actions with the gate. In this case, Erica can Look at the gate, try to Open the gate, and Use her Gun on the gate. When a player clicks on one of these interactions, the game then checks for variables, also called Booleans, with the “Compare Bool” box. In this case, it’s checking whether or not Erica has already shot the padlock on the gate.

If she hasn’t shot it off, then the game gives specific reactions that are defined in the cinematic sequences. If she tries to open the gate, she struggles with the lock and has a conversation with John about it. If she looks at it, she’ll notice that the lock is still there. If she uses her gun, she’ll pull it out and fire a round into the padlock to break it. This action will change the variable, so that the game now knows the lock has been broken and the interactions change. These variables are also called “Booleans”, so “SetBool” is the logic that switches that setting.

At this point, if the player tries to open the gate, Erica will do something different–she’ll remove the chain and padlock, push the gate open, and enter the cemetery. This also changes the scene, something else that is set in the cinematic sequence.

Other actions that are defined here are the hints in Erica’s phone. After Erica tries to open the gate once, she can text her dad for a hint about how to get inside. Once she shoots the lock, that hint is removed (regardless or whether the player has looked at it or not), as she no longer needs it.

These variables are constantly being checked in a game–anytime something changes, like the topics you can talk to someone about, whether a particular location is available yet or not, whether a character is in a scene or if they walk out and leave that scene. This is the logic of the game–and like many things, without logic, it just wouldn’t work!

One of the really fun parts of being a game developer is getting to attend gaming conferences and events and call it ‘work’. This weekend is PAX East 2013 here in Boston — gamers of all varieties are coming in from far and wide to celebrate gaming in all its forms in a huge weekend-long convention. How awesome is that?!

Rich & Katie at PAX East 2010

PAX East has a special little place in my heart — not only is the biggest gaming conventions in Boston, but the first time I attended was in 2010. Following the C&D from Activision, PAX EAst 2010 was our big chance to talk to some members of the press about our story, and fellow director Richard Flores and I did exactly that, getting interviews with Kotaku and Joystiq among others that became a part of the momentum that carried us through to working out an agreement with Activision and releasing Episode 1 just a few months later.  So from the get-go, for me, PAX East is always linked to promoting and talking about what’s going on with Phoenix Online.

Back in 2010, those were my first in-person interviews, and with the feeling that so much was on the line, I was so nervous I barely slept at all the night before! Thankfully, most of those nerves are long-gone, but the excitement about getting to meet people from the gaming press and getting to talk about what the projects I and so many others love and pour a crazy amount of time and hard work into hasn’t gone away at all!

Plus there’s being surrounded by the whole of gaming culture, distilled into a concentrated dose that you just get to soak in for three days straight. There are awesomely detailed cosplay costumes, line games played with total strangers while waiting for panels, trying out new games in the exhibition hall — there’s just something welcoming and even a little magical knowing you’re standing in a huge convention center with thousands of strangers and you’ve at least one thing in common with every single of one of them.

This year will be another memorable one! I’ll be meeting three of our team members in person for the first time, talking about our current projects–Cognition Episode 3, Jane Jensen’s Moebius, Mad Orange’s Face Noir–fitting in some interesting panels (I’m especially looking forward to this one about story in indie games, featuring Wadjet Eye’s Dave Gilbert), and being a part of this celebration of games, gamers, and gaming culture.

And if you’re interested in keeping up with what I’m up to over the weekend, follow @katiehal16 or @POStudios on Twitter for pictures and more! Going to be at PAX East? You can check out and play Cognition at two booths! Our demo will be at the IndieGameStand booth(#797) and the Indie Royale folks at the Born Ready Games booth (#1121). And say hi if you see one of us around wearing our red Phoenix Online shirts!